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26
Porte Franklyn
LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Kirra thanked the gods of justice the ridiculous plea bargain she’d been forced to offer to Marvin Bailey’s defense attorney and stoically present to Judge Rupert Blankenship that morning in court had left the good judge red in the face. Judge Blankenship was disgusted and showed it. He looked from her to Bailey’s attorney, while Bailey, who’d been smirking at her from the defense table, looked uncertainly back at him. The judge told them to go back to conference and come up with a more appropriate sentence for Bailey, and the wonderful man had set a date for them to reappear before him, not any other judge. Bailey, who had a sheet longer than her arm, had looked at the judge like he wanted to murder him, then her. She’d given Bailey and his attorney a big smile. It was all she could do not to shout and wave a fist.
But there’d been another case that afternoon in Judge Obermeyer’s court that had made her so angry she’d pictured pulling the judge out of his chair and smacking him on his bald head and then storming into Hailstock’s office, kicking his desk and calling him a slag, a bogan, a wombat, and a lot of other things, because Aussie curses were endlessly inventive. She’d had to plea-deal out DeVon Crowder, a three-time felon, to only six months in county lockup for breaking and entering, robbing a dozen houses with a gun in his pocket, ready to use it if any of the homeowners resisted him. She’d nearly gone over the edge when Obermeyer had practically congratulated Kirra on her enlightened approach, working with defense attorneys rather than against them. Obermeyer gave nothing short of a pep talk to DeVon Crowder, the wanker.
Alec Speers, her boss, said from behind her, “Are you done preparing the Delone case? Or have you been too busy cursing in Aussie about Crowder?”
“I started with calling Hailstock a wanker and Obermeyer a wombat and it went downhill from there. In the privacy of my own head, of course.”
He laughed. “Wombat? I thought a wombat was a really cute little animal, right?”
“In Aussie, a wombat is also an overweight, lazy, slow idiot, the definition that fits in Obermeyer’s case.”
Alec gave her a big grin. “Listen up, Mandarian, you won with Judge Blankenship refusing the plea bargain. You must have really played it well. I wish I could have been there.”
“One win and one Hailstock-ordered six-month deal is a good thing? That’s only fifty percent, Alec. A quarterback with that pass completion percentage wouldn’t be around long. There at the end the defendant was nearly laughing with glee, the defense attorney was giving me a victory smile, and it looked to me like Obermeyer was going to come down from the bench and pat me on the head.”
Alec laughed again. “Nah, his knees are too bad. Obermeyer’s nearly ready to retire, so there’s hope. Enjoy the wins, Kirra, they’re all the sweeter working with Hailstock. At least you’ll get to tell him Blankenship thought his plea deal was a lame excuse for a sentence. Maybe he’ll see the light, who knows?”
“Yeah, like that would ever happen. I wish I could quote him Blankenship’s exact words—‘Are you kidding me, Ms. Mandarian? You made a deal to put this lifelong felon with a gun in his pocket back on the street in six months?’ Better yet, I wish Hailstock had been there to hear it.”
“So do I,” he said over his shoulder as he turned away. “You’ve had a long day, Kirra. So have I. Go home, enjoy your weekend.”
As Kirra walked to her car in the nearly empty Justice Plaza garage, she pulled out her new cell phone to call Uncle Leo, but realized he wouldn’t have coverage because he was somewhere in the wilds of the Northern Territory on an extreme adventure tour, probably the roughest terrain he could find because, he’d told her, he’d be leading a bunch of young bruisers from a climbing club in Memphis who believed they were in better shape than he was. She sighed, put her phone away. She’d wanted to hear her uncle’s voice, telling her whatever he wished, about the team members and how they were doing, about their kids, all of it, or laughing with her about his latest group of sooks. He always made her feel less alone. How she wished she could confide in him, tell him she knew who was responsible for her parents’ death—his sister’s death. But she couldn’t, not yet. If he knew what she’d done, what she was still doing, he’d be appalled, yell at her for endangering herself. Didn’t she understand she was the most important one? No one else? He’d stop her cold, even if he had to fly to the States to see to it himself.
There was her best friend, Cila, but telling her was out of the question. Kirra wasn’t about to make her an accessory. No, Eliot Ness would never be spoken of between them.
Kirra held her car fob close to her leg, the key out. Since she’d become Eliot Ness, she’d made it a habit. As she walked down the ramp to the second garage level, she stayed alert for any unexpected movement. She wished she wasn’t leaving so late. She heard none of the usual voices, the occasional laughs, the sounds of cars starting. She was alone, with only the sound of her heels ricocheting loud as bullets off the concrete walls. She gave a nod to one of Jeter’s detectives, said hi to a secretary from personnel who jumped at the sound of her voice. She walked past empty car slots. It was quiet, too quiet, the shadows becoming deeper and darker. As she walked through them, they seemed to shift, making bizarre patterns on the concrete walls. Kirra tried to talk herself out of the seed of fear growing in her belly. Keep walking, it’s all right, no one’s hiding in a dark corner waiting to leave you lying on the concrete floor. Keep walking.
She’d parked her rental RAV just to the right up ahead, next to the big concrete column at P2. She froze at a sound behind her, whirled around, brought up her key fob, and waited, not moving, listening. She heard nothing else. Kirra let out a harsh breath. She was being an idiot, making herself crazy. She was disgusted with herself and cursed. Then she laughed, her laugh returning to her as an unworldly echo.
When she slipped inside her RAV, Kirra locked the doors first thing, pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, and slowed her breathing. Everything was all right. But was it, really? Could Grissom or Oliveras know who she was? When Ryman Grissom chased her out of the woods, he could have seen her Audi, maybe even made out a couple of the letters of her license plate, enough to find out her name. She hadn’t thought to muddy up her plates that first night at the Oliveras house. Maybe he’d even snapped photos with his cell phone, like Detective Foxxe had when Aldo Springer drove away from Corinne Ewing’s house.
Kirra stayed watchful as she drove toward home. Her stomach growled and she pictured a pizza for dinner loaded with black olives and sausage. She looked in her rearview and spotted a white van three cars behind her. A delivery van? She couldn’t see the sides, where there might be a name, some kind of designation. The van stayed back three cars, always three cars. She made a couple of turns to be sure the white van was following her. It always turned with her, keeping its distance. She tried to see how many people were in the van, but the afternoon sun was bright in her eyes and she could only make out the shape of the driver.
All right, they know who I am.It was a hard pill to swallow, but no choice. It meant she’d been careless, something Eliot Ness would never be. But now on the open road, out of that dark empty Justice Plaza garage with all its shadows, Kirra wasn’t afraid. There was a good chance she could outdrive them. She was in an all-wheel drive RAV, whoever it was behind her in a clunky van. She was comfortable driving at speed while weaving and dodging because she’d had a one-semester fling while she was at university in Canberra with a racing fanatic who’d taught her how. But she needed a plan to deal with whatever they’d throw at her. She could drive toward the police station rather than home, but that would take her into downtown traffic, and red lights. If they were armed, they could shoot her if she let them get too close and a bystander could be hurt.
She glanced again in her rearview, slowed. Two cars, and then the van was right behind her, but not crowding, only another commuter heading home after putting in a late day at work. The sun went behind clouds and Kirra saw the driver more clearly—a man wearing a watch cap. If there was anyone else in the van, they were in the back, out of sight.
“Let’s see what you’ve got, then, you bloody wanker,” she said aloud as she turned right onto Grapeseed Avenue, away from town. She drove sedately for three blocks toward the Ross Parkway. At the last second she veered away from the parkway on-ramp and drove instead onto what was now the frontage road, once, years before, one of the main thoroughfares through Porte Franklyn. It was in miserable shape now, not maintained for a good two decades, a remnant of the 1960s. Few people used it anymore, because it was dangerous, the ancient hardtop broken and potholed, but Kirra knew it well. She’d practiced on it often because it was challenging and usually empty. The road twisted and climbed when it parted from the parkway, switchbacked over the rising hills east of town, until it flattened out some five miles from Wilmont. There were only a few old exits that gave onto narrow country roads to smaller communities, overgrown and hardly used and no guardrails to keep a car from flying free down naked cliffs covered only with brush. She sped up when they approached the first hill.
The white van kept up, staying a good fifty yards behind her. The driver had to realize she’d noticed him. Did he wonder where she was headed on this ancient unused road? Pleased they’d soon be in the middle of nowhere where there’d be no witnesses?
The white van suddenly sped up and honked, as if to pass her. She looked back. He was ready to make his move. The van smashed into her rear bumper at an angle, forcing her into a slide toward the edge of the road and the drop-off into a deep gulley below. Kirra steered into the slide to get back control, turned back toward the middle of the road, and floored it, pulling away from the van. She was headed downhill again toward a flat stretch she knew would veer suddenly into another curve, this one sharp, dangerous at high speed. She slowed a bit and let the van roar up behind her again. Just before the van struck her rear again, she powered away, so the RAV barely felt the blow.
She knew one of the exits to a country road was coming up, a sharp right immediately after a blind turn. She floored it, squealing a good distance away from the van. She downshifted into the blind turn and skidded the RAV off the exit onto the side road. She pulled behind a stand of maple trees and waited.
